Yohuru Williams: Unity Requires Economic Justice and Moral Clarity
Historian Yohuru Williams argues that unity loses meaning when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message is stripped of its challenges to economic inequality, militarism, and moral priorities. Featured in the Echoes of Unity Special Edition, Williams calls for a fuller understanding of King’s legacy that connects civil rights to economic justice and present-day realities.
Historian Yohuru Williams said many Americans celebrate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while overlooking the parts of his message that challenged economic inequality, militarism and the nation’s moral priorities. Williams said those issues remain central to any meaningful definition of unity.
Williams, a historian and public scholar, spoke with the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder as part of the paper’s “Echoes of Unity” series. He said King is often reduced to what he called a “truncated” memory centered on the March on Washington and selective lines from the “I Have a Dream” speech, a framing that makes King easier to praise but harder to follow.
“People want to shoehorn him into a truncated view,” Williams said, describing King as a “very deep thinker” whose work extended far beyond a single iconic moment.
Williams said a fuller understanding of King requires examining the final years of his life, when King expanded the civil rights agenda to confront poverty and economic exclusion. In King’s last book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” Williams said King warned the movement made a “grievous error” by focusing on access and opportunity without securing the economic ability to benefit from those rights.
“Civil rights without economic justice are dead rights,” Williams said, summarizing King’s argument that legal gains become hollow when people lack the resources to use them.
That critique, Williams said, remains visible in present-day debates over housing and employment. Efforts to address racial inequality without confronting poverty, he said, often lead to symbolic victories followed by persistent disparities.
Asked what King might view as today’s most urgent civil rights frontier, Williams pointed to what King described late in his life as the “triplets” of injustice: racism, materialism and militarism, which Williams said “work in concert” to perpetuate inequality.
That framework, Williams said, also explains his concern about the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. The most serious danger, he said, is “artificial intelligence wedded to white supremacy,” which he described as an existential threat to communities of color, particularly Black communities.
The risk, Williams said, extends beyond biased systems to economic displacement. When major shocks hit society, he said, they often affect Black communities first, but the consequences do not remain contained.
“As goes the Black community,” Williams said, “everyone is vulnerable,” adding that King warned the nation would suffer collectively if it failed to protect those most at risk.
Williams contrasted artificial intelligence with earlier waves of technological change. Mechanization in Southern agriculture displaced Black workers and helped drive migration to cities, where factory jobs could absorb some of the workforce. AI, he said, differs because it threatens not only manual labor but also complex work once associated with professional stability.
“It’s not just taking entry-level jobs,” Williams said. “No jobs are really safe now.”
He said AI can produce in minutes the kind of analytical work that once anchored career paths, raising questions about who benefits from productivity gains and what happens to workers whose skills are rapidly devalued. Beyond economics, Williams said, widespread displacement threatens people’s sense of identity and purpose.
To illustrate the danger of technological progress divorced from human need, Williams cited Gil Scott-Heron’s 1969 poem “Whitey on the Moon,” which questions national priorities when innovation advances while basic needs such as health care and food remain unmet.
Williams said the technology debate is unfolding alongside what he called the “death of the public square,” with communities increasingly divided into information silos and shared facts harder to sustain. The resulting “assault on truth,” he said, has fueled disillusionment, particularly among young people who have experienced overlapping crises.
In that climate, Williams said journalists have a responsibility to pursue truth and amplify voices most likely to be ignored. The Black press, he said, has historically been “at the vanguard of truth telling” and remains essential for connecting policy decisions to lived experience.
Despite the challenges, Williams said he does not “lose hope.” He compared the current moment to a “winter of our discontent,” but said hope requires shared responsibility across education, journalism, politics and business.
“No one gets to walk away from that responsibility right now,” he said.
For Minnesotans, Williams said one of King’s most urgent messages is that justice, and unity, begin locally. During a visit to Minnesota, King warned that “no community exists in a vacuum,” Williams said, and called for everyday commitments in the places where people live and have influence.
“You can’t control what’s happening across the street,” Williams said. “But you can still control what’s happening three feet in front of us.”
Scott Selmer welcomes reader responses sselmer@spokesman-recorder.com.